What actually happens to a restaurant space in downtown Western Springs after it closes?
If you watched Salerno's Pizzeria go dark at 821 Burlington Avenue back in January, you might have assumed the usual small-town math: a vacant storefront, a for-lease sign in the window, months of guessing about what comes next. That is not what happened here. By late July, a liquor license application was on file with the village for Alano Ristorante, an "elegant Italian restaurant" planned for that same address, targeting a late October opening. The owner is Chris Elsey, and he did not have to go looking for a foothold in town. He already has one. Elsey owns Hillgrove Tap, the American bar and restaurant with locations in Western Springs and Tinley Park, and before that he was the managing partner at Francesca's, the restaurant group with locations in Elmhurst and Naperville.
That detail matters more than the opening itself. It tells you something about how Burlington Avenue actually works that you will not get from a list of new restaurants: when a space here closes, the next tenant is often someone who was already invested in the block. Western Springs isn't attracting strangers to fill its storefronts. It's watching its own operators expand into them.
The First Data Point Isn't the Only One
Elsey's application to the village describes Alano's plans in plain terms: appetizers, salads, pasta, pizza, fish, chicken, and steaks, priced around thirty to forty five dollars a person once you count a drink. The buildout, according to his own filing, is modest.
"Minor remodeling of the existing space is proposed."
That's a telling line. A brand-new operator coming to town from outside usually guts a space and rebuilds it to match a concept. Someone who already runs a restaurant two doors down and understands exactly what that room can handle doesn't need to.
Alano is not the only place you can see this instinct at work. Rewind to 2023 and Vie, the restaurant that had anchored 4471 Lawn Avenue for nineteen years, closed that October. At the time, the restaurant told local reporters it planned to reopen somewhere else in Western Springs rather than leave the village behind. Whether or not that specific plan is what became Petite Vie, the French brasserie and cafe from Chef Paul Virant that opened four blocks away on Burlington Avenue in May 2024, the throughline holds either way: a marquee closure in this town rarely reads as an exit. It tends to read as a relocation, with a new concept from a familiar kitchen showing up somewhere else on the same short list of blocks within the year.
That's the pattern that separates Burlington Avenue from a suburban business district that's simply losing tenants. Spaces change hands here, but the people running the businesses tend to stay in town and reinvent the format rather than disappear from it.
The Street Had to Be Ready First
None of this reinvestment happens in a vacuum, and the timing here is not incidental. In August 2024, the village board approved a $1.9 million contract with the Plano-based firm H. Linden & Sons to rebuild Burlington Avenue between Grand Avenue and Wolf Road, the same stretch where Alano, Petite Vie, Kirschbaum's Bakery, and Village True Value Hardware all sit. The project replaced a water main that was pushing a century old, added two sidewalk bump-outs specifically to make room for more outdoor dining, and built a raised midblock crosswalk connecting the sidewalk to the train platform. Two business owners on the block, Katie McMillan of Clever Girl boutique and Linda Johnson of Village True Value Hardware, went on record supporting an earlier start time for the construction crews just to get the disruption over with faster.
The village describes the project as substantially complete as of 2024. In other words, downtown Western Springs finished tearing up its own sidewalks and rebuilding them for outdoor dining before this current wave of restaurant reinvestment started showing up in liquor license filings. A pizzeria closes in January, an application for its replacement is filed by July, and the sidewalk out front already has the bump-out built to hold the tables. That's not two unrelated headlines. That's a street that got its infrastructure in order ahead of the businesses that needed it.
What's Actually On Burlington Avenue Right Now
Strip away the turnover story for a second and look at what a five minute walk down Burlington Avenue gets you today, plus what's coming by the end of the year:
- Petite Vie, Chef Paul Virant's French brasserie at 909 Burlington, open for coffee, breakfast, or a full dinner
- Davanti Enoteca, the Italian spot a short walk from the Metra platform
- Kirschbaum's Bakery, at 825 Burlington, in its current location since 1954
- Village True Value Hardware, at 835 Burlington, also running since 1954
- Clever Girl boutique, on Burlington Avenue, for the kind of gift you grab on the way home
- Taco Maya, which took over the old C2 Education space at the Garden Market center off Gilbert Avenue, part of an eleven-location chain with other outposts in Downers Grove and Arlington Heights
- Alano Ristorante, targeting a late October opening at 821 Burlington, in the space Salerno's left behind
That's a downtown small enough to walk end to end in the time it takes a kettle to boil, and dense enough that a hardware run, a birthday gift, and dinner reservations can all happen on the same block without moving the car.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
If you're in Western Springs, none of this changes your commute or your property taxes. What it changes is the calculus of a Tuesday night. For most of this year, if you wanted an occasion dinner without leaving town, your options were Petite Vie or Davanti Enoteca. Starting late October, there's a third seat at the table, and it's coming from someone who has spent years learning what this specific block of Burlington Avenue can support, because he's been running a bar on it the whole time.
It also means the closures you notice this fall are worth watching more closely than they might seem at first glance. A dark storefront on Burlington Avenue is increasingly not a symptom of decline. It's more often the pause between one concept and the next one, held by an owner who already knows the room, the foot traffic, and the neighbors on either side of the door.
That is the version of downtown Western Springs that doesn't show up in a quick scroll through delivery app listings or a chain's press release. It shows up in liquor license filings, in village board minutes, and in noticing that the name on the new sign is the same name that's been running a business a few doors away all along.
If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of Burlington Avenue is actually worth, or thinking about what smart staging looks like for a village this walkable and this specific, Clare Spartz at Clare Sells Homes covers Western Springs alongside the rest of Chicago's north side and its close-in suburbs. Reach out for a free home valuation and staging consult built around what this market is actually doing right now, not a generic read on the suburbs.
